Lobby of Daniel Zeichner MP (Cambridge): Don't Bomb Syria

CAMBRIDGE Stop The War Coalition has spent the last few days trying to lobby our Labour MP, Daniel Zeichner, to get him to vote against bombing Syria when David Cameron calls for a vote in Parliament in the next few weeks.

Having happily spoken at our #RefugeesWelcome demonstration last Saturday 10 October, he suddenly became hard to track down.

Constituents asking to see him at his surgery on Friday 16 October were told that not only were no appointments left but the location of the surgery could not be revealed due to "security issues" and when "things are properly in place", the address will be made known.

Not to be put out by Daniel's elusiveness we made our presence known in the city centre outside Guildhall in the hope that we might encounter Daniel in the vicinity.

No MP showed but we got a good deal of leafleting done as well as signing up for "Stop bombing Syria" petition and interest in joining our organising committee.

As darkness fell and the evening became chilly we packed up our banner and headed home wondering what had become of our MP.

The mystery came near to being solved when we heard of a Labour party meeting at their head quarters off Norfolk St. With our banner strategically placed to greet Daniel Zeichner as he exited the hall we waited patiently for the meeting to end.

Labour members were astonished that their MP would even consider doing anything apart from voting No to the bombing of Syria. We assured them that there was still a need to lobby him and encouraged them to email him.

Finally Daniel emerged but far from being happy to see us, he very curtly expressed that he was very well aware of the issues and would consider them when it came to a vote.

It was as imperative as ever, after this non commital response, to ask his constituents to lobby Daniel.

Constituents were encouraged to attend our meeting discussing the Syria situation with StWC Chair, Andrew Murray on Mon 19 Oct and almost all signed the petition.

We will follow this action up by emailing all those who signed the petition to use the useful lobbying tool from the StWC website and contact Daniel Zeichner immediately.